Uzbekistan new indd

russian language in the Sociocultural Space  
of Angren
Due to the outflow of the Russian-speaking popula-
tion during the period of independence, the use of 
Russian language in the urban public space dramat-
ically evolved. However, Russian still has a strong 
position in Angren’s social and cultural arenas. 
Demand for Russian education remains extremely 
high. Currently there are five schools in Angren that 
provide education in two languages, both Russian 
and Uzbek. This is impressive given the fact that 
there are only 4,621 Russians left, and few of them are 
children. By comparison, as of January 1, 2013, there 
were 28,653 Tajiks living in Angren (16.8 percent),
18
 
while there are only five schools that instruct in Tajik.
In an interview Lucia Shamilevna Rebechenko, 
director of school no. 33 and chairperson of the 
Angren branch of the Russian Cultural Center, sug-
gests that the indigenous population developed a high 
demand for children’s education in Russian. Russian-
instructed classes are overcrowded; in a school with 
five classes, four classes are instructed in Russian and 
only one in Uzbek.
19
The reasons for such a high demand for educa-
tion in Russian are:
•  Perception of the quality and benefits of edu-
cation in Russian;
•  Education in Russian is a prerequisite for ca-
reer opportunities both in Uzbekistan and 
abroad;
•  The socioeconomic orientation towards 
Russia due to labor migration. Evgeny 
Abdullayev had rightly noted that Russia in 
the 2000s has regained a symbolic status as 
“big brother,”
20
•  Russian-Uzbek bilingualism maintained 
from the Soviet era.
It would seem that because of the change from Cyrillic 
to Latin alphabet for Uzbek in the 1990s and the on-
going ‘Uzbekification’ of public life the position of the 
Russian language had been completely undermined, 
but it turns out that Russian is booming in the cities 
of the Tashkent region.
The officers of Rossotrudnichestvo (an agen-
cy working under the Russian Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs) in Uzbekistan mentioned that representatives 
of the country’s elite seek to improve their Russian-
language skills to better take advantage of Internet 
resources, and specialized literature. In Tashkent, 
the Russian Cultural Center and Rossotrudnichestvo 
provide courses to train students at community col-
leges (in Uzbekistan schooling continues until ninth 
grade, followed by three years of specialized school) 
to enroll in Russian universities. For example, for the 
2011-12 academic year the Ministry of Education 
and Science of the Russian Federation had allocated 
297 places for these students.
21
At the same time, it should be noted that the 
popularity and dissemination of the Russian lan-
guage does not necessarily entail its widespread use. 
The younger generation, born in the late 1980s and 
early 1990s, has been educated in schools with state 
language, while Russian might have been main-
tained as an elective language. As a result, Russian is 
used in domestic spheres and the media in a rather 
simplified way.
For the Russian-speaking residents of Angren 
it remains unclear how best to educate their young-
er generation. Currently, the Tashkent region is the 
only one in the country that has no higher education 
institution. Out of Angren’s postsecondary-educa-
tion institutions there is only one with a “European 
group” (i.e. with Russian-language instruction), the 
Medical College. In July 2011, on the eve of entrance 
exams, the Tashkent Regional Pedagogical Institute, 
named after Mahmud Kashgari (TOGPI), closed its 
17 Angren City, http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/252029.
18 Materials provided by the State Committee on Statistics of the Republic of Uzbekistan 112/4, August 6, 2013.
19 Author’s field materials. Angren, April 18, 2014.
20 Abdullayev, “Ob identichnosti russkikh Sredney Azii,” 9.
21 Memo on quota for education in Russian universities for 2011-12 academic year, allocated to support compatriots. Materials provided by the office 
of Rossotrudnichestvo in Uzbekistan, 2012.

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Yulia Tsyryapkina
50
doors unexpectedly.
22
 The Pedagogical Institute pro-
vided training not only for educators, but also for city 
law-enforcement agencies. Because of the TOGPI 
closure, the opportunities to obtain higher educa-
tion dropped dramatically for all Angren residents. 
A branch of the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical 
Institute operates in Almalyq, forty-five kilometers 
from Angren.
Overall, higher education in Uzbekistan is grad-
ually becoming elitist, as the system of stipends acts 
on a case-by-case basis and the majority of students 
enroll on a contract basis, with a high tuition fee. In 
this system, only those who can afford to pay tuition 
get education and most of the Russian-speaking pop-
ulation of Angren— industrial workers, teachers, 
drivers, etc.—miss out on such opportunities. It must 
be noted that it is this ‘closed’ system of higher edu-
cation that acts as a major factor pushing the mid-
dle-aged Russian-speaking residents to participate in 
the repatriation program in Russia, where access to 
higher education is significantly easier.
During twenty-three years of independence, 
dramatic changes have occurred in Angren’s urban 
space, including shifting ethnic composition and 
transformation of the industrial and manufactur-
ing sector, but the use of Russian in the public space 
seems largely unchanged. This phenomenon can be 
explained by the functional stability of the Russian 
language in industrial production.
This is confirmed by three interviews recorded 
with the employees of Angren’s leading industrial en-
terprises. A driver for a local logistics company con-
firmed that internal documentation is kept entirely 
in Russian.
23
 An electrician from one of Angren’s 
gold-processing plants also confirmed that all inter-
nal documentation is compiled in Russian, and that 
company regulations are also maintained in Russian: 
“For example, I worked in energy management. All 
negotiations there between the controllers had been 
led in Russian. Because a dispatcher does not know 
many electrical terms in Uzbek, while he, for exam-
ple, must pass the instruction to disable or enable 
any line, his colleague may not perceive the Uzbek 
properly, can make a mess and may bring the peo-
ple under death, so everybody is forced to speak in 
Russian.”
24
 Elsewhere in that interview the following 
exchange took place:
A: “My whole shift must be fixed in the log.”
Yu.Ts.: “In Russian?”
A.: “In Russian, yes, and Uzbek shift, who work with me, 
they also write in Russian. Firstly, nothing is recorded in 
Uzbek. Secondly, we have two Russians, one Tatar, and 
three Uzbeks. They write in bad Russian, but this is Russian. 
They usually can write everything in Russian. He writes in 
bad language and it is funny to read, of course, when you 
take the shift, but this is clearer than their Uzbek.”
The third example is related to the activities of an em-
ployee from an Angren coal mine. He too confirms 
that the managers give all commands to load and un-
load the coal in Russian and that the technical docu-
mentation is compiled entirely in Russian.
25
Therefore, since Angren retains its industri-
al status, employees of big enterprises, including 
Uzbeks and Tajiks, must be bilingual. With the on-
going modernization of local industries, the demand 
for Russian will probably increase as the Russian lan-
guage remains the language of the industrial world. 
In this regard, it would be useful to further investi-
gate the issues surrounding new businesses built in 
the Angren industrial zone after 2012. In what lan-
guage would production be directed in the new fa-
cilities? For example, a cardboard factory purchased 
a huge workshop and new equipment, but while 
the project was supervised by Czech entrepreneurs, 
the head engineers were invited from Novosibirsk, 
Russia.